CTV Saskatoon

CTV Saskatoon

In 2015 Bell Media was moving many of their news casts to HD, and CTV Saskatchewan was no exception. However, the Saskatoon studio did have some extra challenges.

In Saskatoon CTV regularly broadcasts 5 live shows, all sharing a single studio room. Peter Christensen the Saskatoon Operations Manager recognized that this was an opportunity to give everyone involved a little more elbow room. Since the set was being upgraded with the HD conversion Peter designed a single new set that could accommodate Morning Live, Farmgate, and all 3 news casts on the same set pieces. This eliminated the duplicate anchor desks and interview areas that were previously making the room feel so tight. The set’s primary surface was a translucent white plastic, allowing each show to uniquely brand the set with their own colors.

In television, especially in HD, quality of light is very important. With the primary considerations being color calibration, consistency, reliability, and flicker free operation it was easy to see that ETC would be the best choice. After testing out several sample lights of varying sizes and color arrays, Peter settled on ETC’s Vivid color mix, intended for bright and saturated color.

The insides of pillars top and bottom are lit with 12 ETC Desire 40 Vivid. There are 14 ETC Seledor Classic 21” Vivid-R lighting the backs of the walls. It took some experimenting with lensing and positioning to get the most even coverage without hot-spots. In the end the seladors were mounted close to the set and the light bounced off of reflective media behind the set, providing bright, smooth colour washes.

The system has proved so flawless, that a year later, similar upgrades were made to CTV’s Regina Studios, Using Peter’s design with Seledor Classic and ColorSource Par fixtures, plus an ETC ColorSource 40 console for control of both the new lighting and the existing sensor dimming.